Transgender Trial and Error: One Year Later

I celebrated my 16th wedding anniversary this past weekend. When I awakened, I didn’t remember my anniversary immediately. I checked my phone, and my photo app had sent a “Remember what happened a year ago…?” notification in an almost-too-convenient act of exposition.

I typically ignore notifications from my photo app, but this notification caught my eye. I saw the first photo of myself wearing a dress in almost 30 years — the dress I wear in the photo above.

That day a year ago, my wife helped me understand that looking feminine and being who I am is a good thing, not something to hide or suppress. That day, she helped me buy lingerie and shapewear, then dress in the purple plaid outfit I now love.

But I hated that outfit that day. I was a dude in a dress, not myself. Over the course of a year, I found myself — because my wife believed in me.

Today, we stand a much better chance at having a lasting and happy relationship. Today, I am far more equipped to care for my son, who can grow up without the trauma caused by my behavior at taking 52 years to transition as I knew I should have 40 years ago. Today, I am the woman I always knew.

I considered sharing that awkward, hesitant photo from a year ago, although I would prefer it never see the light of day. Sharing a photo of an old, worn-out man will contrast with the vibrant, healthy, beautiful lady I am today. But I am still hesitant…I am afraid.

Fear of relief

Whether I demonstrate the contrast directly or not, I recognize the immensity of a year elapsing since I began expressing my femininity instead of thinking about my femininity.

My wife told me recently that she looks back at our years together and sees “Amethysta in pants.” She sees the parts of me that needed setting free to allow my identity to show.

Much of my thought has been around that idea recently — about the threads of identity that run through our lives without us realizing it. But if we realize the threads of identity, we find the person we wanted to be all along, even if we never knew or expected to express that person.

Finding the threads requires complete, brutal honesty with ourselves — we must see our personality and action in context. Without looking at ourselves critically, we cannot see who we are.

Instead, we see the person we think we ought to be for other people. We see the person we wish we were, but will never attain — for whatever reason. We see a dream or an ideal or a lie we tell ourselves — sometimes for very good reasons — instead of the person we were quite literally born to be.

But looking back at my photo from a year ago, I know how much relief comes with discovering the person you play is false. I did not have to pretend to be a man any longer, and it was sweet, sweet release.

None of us must pretend to be a job we hate, a role that suits us poorly, a child who can’t grow up, a character that seemed to fit at first, but grows increasingly stale.

But finding our true selves is difficult — it requires more than becoming. It also requires discarding.

Discarding the comfort

Each of us carries so much baggage through years, personas, relationships, jobs. We believe we will never set it down. The baggage is our inheritance, possibly even a comfort — it is frightening to let go of the past, especially if the past seemed positive in the skewed light of self-doubt.

But no positive feelings last long if we cannot accept our true nature. All situations based on half-truth will fade, pale, become banal — they must. They do not serve us.

Discarding the old — breaking with the past to allow the future to arrive — is critical. Discarding the dead literally is vital — it gives us life. It lets us decide what we did was not best for us, not best for those around us, and not best for a sustainable future.

We can mourn the bad choices we made, feel the pain of lost or missed opportunity…and heal. We can move on. We can become the person who will be best for us and our environment. We can make new opportunities that truly serve who we are and what we bring to the Universe.

Hating the process

In the spirit of brutal honesty, I admit I did not spring fully-grown from that photo a year ago to who I am today like a modern, purple-haired Athena from the brow of the man I was playing at the time (although he was absolutely thunderous in his anger and also refused to accept responsibility for his poor behavior).

No, I played the role poorly before my commitment to transition, and I struggled mightily to find my path through transition.

Even after the elation of wearing a dress and feeling truly seen by my wife — despite the embarrassment at looking like…well, a dude in a dress — I chose to ignore my elation. I spent another six weeks trying to believe in myself enough to begin hormone therapy. Even with the stunning cognitive changes that accompanied hormone therapy, I spent another month deciding to commit to my gender and to embrace the elation forever.

But gender transition has ever been an uncomfortable, bittersweet embrace. I struggled to express myself in other ways — hair, clothes, makeup, voice, name. I worried about how to stand, how to smile, how to communicate non-verbally.

Do I look foolish? Do I look like a pervert? Am I going to be picked up and driven somewhere to be beaten? Am I just going to be beaten psychologically by everyone around me — my family, my friends, my government?

I tottered on my fawn legs of femininity. I resolved several times to discontinue hormone therapy. I did not want to be seen as a fool and inconvenience the rest of the Universe with my self-indulgence.

Taking the leap

But then I saw the notification from Google on the morning on my 16th wedding anniversary.

Remember what you were doing a year ago today? Yes…yes, I remember it vividly. I was dying. I was killing myself. And I thought it was right.

That day — that first time putting on a dress and cringing at the reflection in the mirror — set me on a track toward living. I am no longer dying, no longer killing myself. Today, I care about myself and see myself more honestly and more kindly. All I needed was to be convinced to put on a dress and let my wife take a photo.

Well…that and the realization that failing to take drastic steps to address my mental health would result in drastic changes to everything that gave me comfort — my marriage, my family, my work, my life — everything I stood to lose if I transitioned.

I could not hold on to myself as a man, and I expected not to be able to hold on to myself as a woman.

Facing the fear

Julia Cameron uses a retort in her workshops I will attempt to paraphrase. When confronted with the audacity to suggest an artist begin making art, many of Cameron’s students reply “Do you know how old I will be when I finally learn to play piano / dance ballet / sing opera?”

I asked myself the same question a year ago:

Do you know, Amethysta, what you stand to lose if you transition gender?

The answer Cameron gives — and the answer I finally have the courage to utter — is:

Yes, Frightened Old Man, the same things you stand to lose if you don’t.

Take the leap.

I am no less frightened now to share the photo below than I was when I began writing this article. But I see the dead eyes in the photo very clearly.

Choose life.